"These days, everyone knows academia is a badboyfriend (or girlfriend, depending on your sexual preference). Everyone has their own tale about how it keeps pulling them back in, with tantalizing offers of interviews and seductive whispers of funding, and then crushing their hopes into the tiny shards of a broken career.

This isn’t one of those columns. No, this is a column about having 'The Talk.' Not the imaginary one you have with the academy itself—the one in which you finally kick it to the curb. I mean the one you’ll have repeatedly with everyone you’ve known professionally in the past decade of your life."

"The proportion of America’s college students taught by tenured professors has steadily shrunk over the years. As indicated in this space previously, tenured faculty are relatively expensive so college administrators facing financial pressure are increasing the proportion of teaching done by lower priced substitutes- non-tenure-track adjunct faculty, part-time instructors, even retired professors filling in on a temporary basis."

"Being an adjunct is hard. Unfair wages, few benefits, and little job security leaves many questioning their career choice. We talked to an adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago to see what it takes to make life work as a part-time instructor."

“'Our contract doesn’t start until the week before classes,' said Kins Loree, an adjunct who teaches human anatomy and physiology. 'A lot of times we work on good faith. We go ahead and assume that our contract is going to be there, and we start putting in the time.'”

"After over two years of contract negotiations with the University for higher wages, job security, and benefits, some Loyola faculty, working with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73, orchestrated a full day strike. This was in response to an 11-hour provision the University brought to the negotiations table on April 3rd which would have supposedly undermined all of the progress made with the new contract."

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The Center for the Study of Academic Labor (CSAL) promotes research and scholarship on the transformation of academic labor in higher education, including but not limited to scholarship on contingency and tenure. For more information, visit our site information page or contact us at: